If you’ve been following along here and on instagram stories, you know we have been in heavy project mode in our home. Since we couldn’t find our forever home last fall and spring, we decided to stay put in our current home and make the best use of the spaces we have for our growing family.
Operation bedroom loft space was top of our list. A space our three girls would call their own! In order to make the space accommodate them and their needs, we needed to do a few things to it before we could move them in.
First on our list : remove one of the skylight windows. Having a skylight is nice for natural light but living with the one above our bed for nearly 12 years, we learned not only is it unnecessary it welcomes a few nuances we couldn’t bare any longer. So goodbye skylight, it’s been real.
The second thing on our list : remove the 100 year old barn wood floors. Now before you start raising your hands and possibly yelling to the screen at me for even mentioning such a thing, let me tell you what we learned about our barn wood floors and why we chose to remove them.
Our barn wood floors were made of pine wood. If you know a thing or two about pine wood, you know that it is one of the softest woods of any family. Add a 100 years and the wood becomes even more soft, creating space for the wood to breath more and air to reach the inner grain. The outcome in our situation, since we were using it as flooring, it was VERY loud. Every board had it’s own tune when you’d step on it, creating a song on repeat that we couldn’t take any longer. Nor wanted our girls to be disturbed by. So goodbye 100 year old barn wood floor, you were pretty but we couldn’t take the noise any longer.
The third thing on our list : add a new window facing the south to bring in more natural light to create more open space and feeling less like a box.
Before we even dove into this project we had bigger visions that included expanding the room and adding a small bathroom. The estimates we received we’re far too high than our budget would allow. And since this isn’t our forever home, in fact, rather a year to 2 year plan, we opt not to spend the extra money and instead work with what we got, all the while keeping design and style in mind.
So what have we done so far? so many of you are following along our ig stories, which we love and appreciate your support and participation. In case you missed some what we’ve done so far, tune in here and click on home in our highlights.
We have made a lot of progress this past week which I’ll show you via stories soon! So far, we removed skylight as mentioned. Some of you participated in a poll that I had on stories about keeping the cavity open in the ceiling or closing it. THANK YOU! The majority voted to keep it open and we agreed. So for now, it will remain open and be finished off until we can get a better feel of the space to see if it suits the room or not.
Our barn wood floors have since been replaced by white oak wood flooring. It’s the same flooring we’re using in out basement remodel and I LOVE how it looks in the space. I wish I could convince Aaron into replacing or redoing our main floor hardwood flooring to match but our 1-2 year plan of being in our home doesn’t really accommodate the budget. So I’ll take what I can get, I guess.
The new window we had to special order, so we’re about 1-2 weeks out yet from installing that.
We added shiplap to some of the walls, which I love. To save space, the girls will not have headboards on their new beds so I felt like the wall needed something to pull it all together. Again, sneak peek on our instagram stories 😉
I pulled inspiration from pinterest and these spaces below.
I’ll share phase two of this project with you soon, where I’ll source a few things I’ve purchased for their new room! In addition a DIY tutorial on how we’re making their beds. Things are getting really exciting over here, so stay tuned!
source of the featured image is West Elm.